


she tastes like apple juice and peach

by symbiont



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, First Kiss, Paris (City), Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-21 17:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,165
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30025506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/symbiont/pseuds/symbiont
Summary: ‘It’s too hot,’ Natalie says, rolling over so that she’s looking up at the ceiling. Natalie’s soft, loose shirt rides up with the movement and Wraith carefully averts her eyes; it feels wrong to look at Natalie like that when Wraith feels about Natalie…When she feels how she feels.**Or Wraith muses about Natalie and it's far too hot in Paris.
Relationships: Wattson | Natalie Paquette/Wraith | Renee Blasey
Kudos: 53





	she tastes like apple juice and peach

It’s hot in the city, the heat seeming to press in all around them, working itself through the cracks of the buildings - into the faultlines in the stone and through the peeling gaps in old shuttered windows. Even the air feels thick and heavy, slow moving and shimmering like a heat haze, hot and suffocating. 

Wraith takes a sip of her tea, the rind of the orange bumping against her lips - waxy and rubbery but fresh and fragrant smelling - as the bitter flavour of the green tea and the citrusy, sweetness of the orange spreads across her tongue, before setting down the Capodimonte porcelain cup onto the floor beside her. She stretches like a cat, her toes digging into the soft edge of the carpet, and lazily licks her lips - tasting the last, lingering, leftover taste of the tea and the saltiness of her own sweat. 

The wicker chair where she’s set herself up for the day is starting to dig into there’s a familiar itch starting in her fingertips. She needs a cigarette but suddenly moving a muscle seems like far too much effort so instead Wraith stares down at her sketchpad with unseeing eyes, pencil idly tapping against the page as her concentration wavers. 

‘Merde,’ Natalie says suddenly, her voice muffled by her forearms where she’s sprawled out on her front across the tatty, old chaise lounge. Wraith likes that; how she knows the story behind each and every item in their flat, how Natalie had spotted through the dirt-stained window of an old antiques shop near to Rue de Rosiers and how Wraith had taken one look at the excited and hopeful expression on Natalie’s face and known she couldn’t say no. The shop owner had spoken too quickly for Wraith’s passable French to keep up with, so she’d stood back and let Natalie deal with it up until the shabby thing had turned up on their doorstep. 

Wraith’s gaze is drawn immediately to Natalie, as if she is the center of the universe - her gravity pulling Wraith steadily but surely in. Wraith finds her gaze tracing the fine dusting of hair on Natalie’s forearms, so blonde and thin that it’s only just visible in the sunlight. Wraith swallows around the feeling bubbling in her chest, that always seems to rise to the surface in these strange little intimate moments like this between her and Natalie. Those moments when it feels as if they are captured inside a ship in a bottle, just the two of them frozen in time.

_ Together. _

‘It’s too hot,’ Natalie says, rolling over so that she’s looking up at the ceiling. Natalie’s soft, loose shirt rides up with the movement and Wraith carefully averts her eyes; it feels wrong to look at Natalie like that when Wraith feels about Natalie…

When she feels how she feels. 

When her heart beats just a little faster whenever she sees Natalie. When she stares out of the window, down onto the historic Paris streets and yet all she can think of are snatches of memories; memories of Natalie, her face lit up in different kinds of joy. When her fingers itch to trace the outline of Natalie’s features; to preserve Natalie’s image forever in the pages of her sketchbook, exactly as Wraith sees her. 

Beautiful, intelligent, not defined by the heavy expectations she places on herself. Wraith knows Nat’s insecurities, her doubts, as if they were Wraith’s own and yet she’s never met them, never seen them in the flesh. They’re like ghosts, shadows existing only in Nat’s eyes. 

‘Fuck,’ Wraith breathes, her fingers itching more fiercing, practically tingling with want. Losing herself in nicotine is cowardice, though, and besides, her lighter is across the room along with her wallet and a dirty coffee mug - proclaiming ‘visit California’ in sunny, if chipped, text.

‘It’s too hot to exist!’ Natalie grumbles again, twisting on the chaise for a few more moments before she gives up, propping herself up on one elbow, her head pillowed in her palm. Wraith aches with the desire to know exactly what Natalie’s palm feels like, is it rough from her work in the lab and her aversion to rubber gloves, or is the skin soft and carefully maintained with lotions and potions. 

‘I’ve opened the window as wide as it’ll go,’ Wraith says, tipping her head back and feeling her bangs cling to her forehead - damp with sweat. ‘These old places are beautiful but I’d kill for a modern build with some aircon right about now. Maybe I should move.’ 

‘Don’t move away,’ Nat says but when Wraith glances towards her again, she can see that Nat is smiling. ‘Who will I wake up at 6 am on my way to class then. Whose shitty taste in music will I have to criticise.’

‘Oh, I’m sure you could criticise just about anyone’s taste in music, Nat,’ Wraith says, her lips twitching involuntarily into a smile. They never feel right on her face, not anymore, but with Nat it’s okay. She lets herself be instead of holding herself in so tightly, laced up like a corset. ‘And who said you couldn’t come with me.’

Nat’s smile slips away, her eyes turning serious and Wraith’s stomach drops. 

‘I couldn’t move. Not when Papa used to…,’ she trails off but they both know her meaning well enough.

‘Nat… I was joking. I’m sorry, I would never,’ Wraith twists in her chair, running her fingers along the raise indents the wicker has left on the backs of her thighs. ‘You know I wouldn’t leave you.’

‘Good,’ Nat says, suddenly intent upon staring at the carpet. ‘Because I would never leave you.’ Her fingers lace and unlace, in an anxious gesture, except Wraith can’t figure out for the life of her what would be making Nat anxious. 

‘But if you knew,’ now Nat is chewing on her lip, speaking slowly like when she’s busy tinkering with one of her electrical doodads, ‘I think you might really leave me.’

Wraith wets her lips, her tongue rasping against the dry skin. ‘If I knew what?’ She can’t help but ask instead of searching fruitlessly for anything that would make her leave Nat. 

‘I like you,’ Natalies breathes, a soft, delicate thing like a rose bud. ‘But I don’t think I’m allowed to.

Wraith pulls herself to her feet. The backs of her thighs are criss-crossed with craters from the wicker chair, her hair is sticking to her forehead and her button up is slipping off one shoulder revealing inches of pale bare skin but Wraith can’t find it in herself to care. She sinks down at Natalie’s side, her knees bumping against the lino and her nails scrapping against that shity, old chaise lounge as she leans over to press a kiss to Natalie’s lips.

‘I like you too,’ she sighs, pulling back just enough so that her breath ghosts across Natalie’s rosy lips. 

Natalie tastes like summer; like apple juice and peach. 


End file.
